# Browser Question-Google is gone

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 3, 2008, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595 "2008-12-03T23:58:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2008, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595/1 "2008-12-03T23:58:58Z")

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I have a very strange problem on my computer.  
This morning, I can no longer connect to [google.com](http://google.com) from one of my computers. No other computers on my home network have a problem-I run Macs, Windows and Linux.  
I don’t have a problem connecting to any other site on my “problem” computer.  
I can’t connect to google from either Firefox or Safari (my main computer is a Mac). I am sure it is a corrupted config file somewhere, but why that would effect both browsers but only block one specific site, I have no idea.  
Has anyone else seen this problem?

I implemented the best high-tech fix available-I rebooted. No change.

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595/2 "2008-12-04T00:29:07Z")

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Did you toss your google cookies yet?

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**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595/3 "2008-12-04T01:31:37Z")

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Need more information. Elaborate on “cannot connect.” Do you get a 404 error?

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**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595/4 "2008-12-04T01:36:28Z")

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I had a similar problem last week. Both my wife and I could not connect. I unplugged my network and plugged it back in. This solved the problem. During this time, all other websites were working fine, but Google did not work on any browser. All I got was the perpetual wait until “could not connect to server” or something like that.

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**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\
**Post date:** [December 4, 2008, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/browser-question-google-is-gone/475595/5 "2008-12-04T02:27:34Z")

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You aren’t a Comcast cable internet user by any chance?

I experienced this sometimes when I had Comcast in Atlanta. I think it was related to their DNS servers, I recall being able to get to Google when this happened by using the IP address (retrieved by a “ping [www.google.com](http://www.google.com)” statement when it was working), instead of typing in “[www.google.com](http://www.google.com)”.

One of my friends, who also used Comcast, experienced this issue as well.